Broadband Fund to bridge SA’s digital divide

Genesis Analytics partnered with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, and Broadband Infraco to design and pilot a Broadband Fund. The fund aims to address South Africa’s triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment by expanding commercially sustainable broadband connectivity to under-served low-income communities.

Broadband connectivity can help bridge the digital divide across digital skills and access to information, which can in turn support economic growth, job creation and ultimately greater socio-economic inclusion. However, low-income areas are typically the least commercially attractive geographies for broadband deployment, resulting in the market failure of high-quality, affordable broadband connections being concentrated in middle- and high-income areas. The Broadband Fund will bring broadband to low-income areas by providing partial subsidies to private broadband infrastructure providers and internet service providers.

The team developed a sophisticated economic model to test various subsidy designs, and supplemented this input with key informant interviews and co-creation workshops. They ultimately arrived at a rigorously determined set of subsidy parameters (such as subsidy value, eligibility criteria and location specifications), a clear governance and operations framework and an implementation plan that concretely mapped out the path to a well-functioning fund.

Initial documents for expressions of interest in the fund were published in early 2023. Set-up of the relevant implementing and governing bodies is ongoing.